[HN Gopher] GNU Stow needs a co-maintainer
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GNU Stow needs a co-maintainer
Author : nequo
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-04-08 20:20 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (savannah.gnu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (savannah.gnu.org)
| freedomben wrote:
| I think Savannah is getting an HN hug <3
| kstrauser wrote:
| From https://www.gnu.org/software/stow/ :
|
| "GNU Stow is a symlink farm manager which takes distinct packages
| of software and/or data located in separate directories on the
| filesystem, and makes them appear to be installed in the same
| place."
|
| The idea is that instead of installing package foopkg directly
| into /usr/local, you could install it to /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3. Then
| you can run stow to make a bunch of symlinks like
| /usr/local/bin/foo -> /opt/foopkg-v1.2.3/bin/foo. Upgrade it to a
| new version, re-run stow, and now all the symlinks point to
| /opt/foopkg-v4.5.6/bin/foo and so on. It's pretty nifty.
|
| However, I used it more for managing dotfiles in my home
| directory than anything else, making links like ~/.vimrc ->
| ~/src/my-config-repo/.vimrc . I much prefer using chezmoi for
| that now.
| Twirrim wrote:
| >It's pretty nifty.
|
| It's how Amazon's stuff used to work (though not using Stow)
| back several years ago. No idea if they've migrated from that
| approach to containers, or similar, yet.
|
| Every application you deployed would have the necessary
| components deployed (or re-used if you had something else that
| already used it), and then build the application space from
| symlinks to those parts. Worked really well.
| thrtythreeforty wrote:
| Ah, symlink farms, how I love to hate thee! They are alive
| and well.
| tubs wrote:
| Still works on link farms, yep. And works pretty well!
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| What is the use case for this? Is the idea that it can
| automatically turn a package into a portable package,
| effectively? Or is it so you can install multiple versions of
| the same software without conflict between them?
| jonhohle wrote:
| And so your development environment artifacts can be linked
| in to the environment root just like any other package
| (really awesome).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| I heard Jia Tan is free /s
| crest wrote:
| Give him some time to recover first. After all the haters
| destroyed the fruits of his tireless labour of love to which he
| dedicated years of his life. /s
| benced wrote:
| Came here to say exactly this
| BeetleB wrote:
| stow was a really useful tool for me once at work. I had a
| "local" usr/* in my home directory for custom packages I'd
| install. Occasionally I'd need to swap different versions of the
| same library, etc. stow made the process a lot more manageable.
| saghm wrote:
| I've found it useful occasionally for when I've needed to
| install something via source that didn't include an "uninstall"
| target in their build configuration. Being able to "unstow" all
| of the symlinks will clean up all of the system directories, at
| which point you can just delete the entire folder where the
| actual installation occurred if you don't want to keep it
| around at all.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I saw a german after-midnight guy setup postgresql like this
| once, on linux.. rather quickly ;-) All the significant system
| parts were in an alternate LD_LIBRARY_PATH plus the postgresl
| libs
| mike_d wrote:
| Site is getting hugged to death. Maybe we can update the URL?
|
| They posted the same notice to GitHub:
| https://github.com/aspiers/stow/issues/104
| anacrolix wrote:
| It's a trap!
| sgammon wrote:
| I love Stow!
| max_k wrote:
| Me too! I've been using it for 20 or so years, and it's one of
| those pieces I didn't know it was still developed or what
| features were added, because the feature set from 20 years ago
| is still enough for me. IOW: maybe it doesn't need a maintainer
| at all.
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